1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to: an image forming apparatus such as a multifunctional digital machine which is also referred to as Multifunction Peripheral (MFP); and a document preview method for the image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
The following description sets forth the inventor's knowledge of related art and problems therein and should not be construed as an admission of knowledge in the prior art.
There has been a common MFP which is capable of, for example: displaying on a display a preview image of image data read out from a document by image scanning; examining whether the orientation and order of pages are correct; and allowing users to rotate the orientation and recover the proper order of pages if necessary.
Also there has been a common MFP which is capable of: detecting text sections and illustration sections such as charts, tables, photos, and the like and separating from an image format document obtained by document scanning; converting the text sections to a text data format by the optical character recognition function; consolidating the text sections in a text data format and the illustration sections in an image data format all together into an electronic document consisting of a plurality of pages; and displaying a preview image of the pages on a display, one by one or plural by plural.
Such a document may include an illustration section such as a photo on one of the pages and an explanatory text section thereof which continues to another page that follows. A MFP can display a preview image of each page of the document on a display screen in the order of page numbers. While reading texts in the explanatory text section, users may want go back to review a drawing or photo in the illustration section on a previous page.
In this case, users used to change the preview image to a previous page to review the illustration section thereon then return the preview image back to the original page, all manually.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2010-286904 discloses an image processing apparatus which is capable of displaying picture or graphical objects in a page layout other than the order of page numbers; and editing the page layout by detecting coordinate values of all page breaks in the objects, separating the objects by the detected coordinate values, and allocating them on their relative pages.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. S63-059654 discloses an image processing apparatus which achieves efficiency in editing a document, i.e., allows users to select any of the fixed blocks controlled independently from the document itself to transfer an image to a predetermined page even while editing the document, only by giving an instruction to create or delete a page break.
However, it is very troublesome to change the preview image from an original page to a previous page to review an illustration section thereon then return the preview image back to the original page, all manually, which is a problem still remaining unsolved by these publications.
The techniques described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publications No. 2010-286904 and S63-059654 are capable of editing the page layout or moving an image to another position, but cannot solve the inconvenience which occurs when changing the preview image from an original page to another page to review a drawing or photo in an illustration section thereon, as described above.
The description herein of advantages and disadvantages of various features, embodiments, methods, and apparatus disclosed in other publications is in no way intended to limit the present invention. Indeed, certain features of the invention may be capable of overcoming certain disadvantages, while still retaining some or all of the features, embodiments, methods, and apparatus disclosed therein.